Feral Horses Design Exercise 2019
As part of the Feral Horses recruitment process, I was given a brief consisting of three deliverables.
Highlight three issues within the secondary market of Feral Horses, lay out your rationale and design one solution.
A gallerist comes to you and wants to know how people can buy shares of art directly from their gallery OFFLINE. Create a user flow and describe it to the gallerist.
What skills do you lack to become the person that would fulfil the 11-star experience of becoming the Product Master.
Introduction
Within this project, I will discuss my design decisions with rationale and take you through the design process I used to complete this exercise. I’ve split the project into three parts. A user experience case study on the secondary market within the existing Feral Horses platform, a user flow and explanation for the gallerist and my pathway to becoming the Product Master.
The Secondary Market
Research
To identify issues within the current product I needed to further understand trading, specifically within art, the Feral Horses product and their competitors. I studied art trading articles, competitors such as Maecenas, Artstaq and Arthena as well as other products within trading such as Stockflare in order to gain a holistic view of the environment in which I would be designing.
Experience Mapping
I conducted two experience maps laying out step by step the experience a user has within the context of the Secondary Market identifying opportunities to improve. The experience maps were completed by myself and a friend that I enlisted with us both trying to achieve the same goal:
I want to find artwork to invest in and learn more about the artist.
Pain Points
I combined the results of both experience maps and extracted the pain points I had identified within them. These are:
Exchange Page
- The format of the quotations makes it hard to scan
- There is poor discoverability of the artists page
- The term quantity confuses users
Artwork Page
- Users want to see the artwork in fullscreen
- There is poor discoverability of the artists page
- The user does not know what position refers to
- Text readability
- The quantity abbreviation qnt is confusing to users
- The artist not writing their own pieces about the artworks disconnects the user from the artist when making an investment
Artist Page
- The language information on the artist is irrelevant
- The exhibitions can use a great amount of space, disconnecting the artist from their artwork on the page
- The playlist feature is unavailable
HMW
Using the core Google Design Sprint method of How Might We, I positively reframed the most important previous pain points to expand thinking, preventing myself from arriving at premature solutions.
Exchange Page Artworks
- HMW make the quotations more scannable
- HMW increase the discoverability of the artist’s page
Artwork Page
- HMW allow users to see artworks in more detail
- HMW increase the discoverability of the artist’s page
- HMW increase the readability of the text
Artist Page
- HMW make the artist more connected to his work
Job Stories
I used Clay Christensen’s job framework based on situation, motivation and outcome. Framing “every design problem in a job, focusing on the triggering event or situation, the motivation and goal, and the intended outcome” to craft an idea of the users’ goals and motivations.
- When I’m searching for an artwork to invest in, I want to research the artists, so that I know who I’m investing in.
- When I’m looking at an artwork, I want to view it in detail, so that I can appreciate the piece and gain an understanding of what it looks like in physical form.
- When I’m thinking about investing in artwork, I want to understand it’s value and performance history, so that I can make an informed decision on whether to invest.
- When I’m searching for an artwork to invest in, I want to enjoy it aesthetically, so that I can be proud to co-own art.
Design
Ideation
For each How Might We statement I generated solutions:
HMW make the quotations more scannable
- Spread the quotations horizontally
HMW allow users to see artworks in more detail
- Zoom feature
HMW increase the discoverability of the artist’s page
- An artist tab
HMW increase the readability of the text
- Adjust font weight
HMW make the artist more connected to their work
- Change the hierarchy between previous artwork and exhibitions
- Hide some exhibitions behind a load more button
As well as generating solutions to these specific problems throughout this process I also thought of some interesting features that could possibly be useful in the future:
- Add artists social media links so that users can follow them and stay up to date building the artists fanbase
- It would be interesting if users had the ability to watch or follow certain artists or artworks
- I wonder if it would be possible to generate data on the artists performance by combining data from their artworks available on the platform
- It could be useful to allow users to search by artists like on Dribbble
- Information on the artists work and on the artist themselves written by them. Thinking about scalability and extremes, for 100,000 pieces of art, you would need to write 100,000 pages of information. By allowing the artist to write their own material it might also help the user form a connection with the creator
Design Solutions
The three most important How Might We statements I would highlight from my research are:
- HMW make the quotations more scannable
- HMW allow users to see artworks in more detail
- HMW increase the discoverability of the artist’s page
I decided to focus on and design what I felt was the most important problem within the product. The discoverability of the artists page. I spent a great amount of time on the platform before I discovered that there was an artists page and if I hadn’t accidentally stumbled across it it’s likely that I still wouldn’t know it existed today. This is a big discoverability issue. My design solution is quite simple which is why I’ve also attempted to tackle the other issues, I’ve created a tab which indicates to the user there is an artists page. Although this is a small change it solves a big problem, I believe that a user's connection to the artist must be developed in the future. From my research, I found that not only are you investing in artwork when you invest but you are also investing in the artist, I will be interested to see how that connection and relationship develops.
To allow the user to see artworks in more detail I have also created a view fullscreen button which indicates to the user that they are able to view the image in more detail. I’ve made some minor adjustments to this page that includes changing the Mixed text to Mixed Medium in the top right-hand corner as out of context users were confused by Mixed. I also removed the position text below this as myself and users didn’t know what this was referring to, therefore, it may as well be gone. The weight of the body text has been lightened to Regular instead of Medium in an attempt to improve readability. I have also changed the price text to Best Price, 2nd Price and 3rd Price instead of Best Price, 1st Price and 2nd Price. The text qnt referring to quantity has also been changed to shares as I feel that this is more relevant and understandable to users in the context.
Finally, to make the quotations more scannable I set them out horizontally making some other adjustments to the page as well including changing the quantity to shares and decreasing the visual weight of the view button. This should allow vertical scanning to be easier for the user when looking at quotations.
These are the changes I would make but bare in mind that some of these may be subjective to my personal tastes. You can try out the changes I’ve made here:
Offline Interaction
User Flow
I created a user flow for a user who comes to a gallery and wishes to purchase shares in a painting. I will discuss further the method.
Discover: The user discovers a painting they like and discovers that they can purchase shares of that artwork for a fixed price.
🖼
Approach: The user approaches you the gallerist and asks to purchase x amount of shares
👋
Platform: You the Gallerist open a page on the Feral Horses platform specifically to sell shares for that artwork which displays the price per share and confirms the number of shares the user wishes to purchase
💻
Input: You the Gallerist input the name of the buyer within the page, the email address of the buyer and the number of shares they would like to purchase
⌨
Purchase: The user makes the purchase via card
💳
Certificate: Once the purchase is complete the certificate will be sent to the user's email and an account is created for the user on the Feral Horses platform
📨
Physical: You the gallerist can print the certificate for the user if they wish, the certificate displays the percentage amount that the user now owns and an image of the artwork shares were purchased of
📃
Transaction Complete: The transaction is complete, the user has their shares in physical form and in a digital form protected by Feral Horses partnership with Codex which stores ownership and provenance while ensuring privacy for collectors
🤝
Interesting Interaction
While developing the user flow I had an idea for an interesting interaction for an offline event within a gallery using projected light. The idea is that points of light are projected onto an artwork each representing one share. The projections will start at zero however for each share purchased both online and offline, a new point of light will be projected onto the artwork in real time. This could be an interesting interaction between art and modern technology much like what Feral Horses is doing with their platform. I have created a visual to supplement this idea.
Becoming The 11-Star Product Master
Skills
I personally would need to develop my understanding of project management methodologies such as agile and scrum, I know vague ideas about both of these but not enough for a total understanding of each. I would need to further understand prototyping and be able to identify what concepts and systems are implementable. There are many Dribbble and Behance projects which while they are beautiful, are impossible to develop. I need to constantly increase my sense of visual design and further understand how investments in shares generally work in order to become a great 11-Star Product Master.
Thanks
Thanks For Reading!
